• Nobody's Home
• Daniel Anderson (bio)

All winter, these tangled caneswere silver-thorned and vicious to the root.But now, bearing black fruit,they deepen, blush, and thrivein high, unruly lanes,annihilating where they growthe fence posts and corroded chicken wireof some forgotten boundary line.The Cascade air is dry and tossed with pine,but in the pure sunthese thickets smell like wine,a heady, tannin atmosphere.This late, the river mostly runson ghosts of melted mountain snows.The water winks and glisters as it goes.I can understandwhy one would build his cabin here,though now the mossy roof is caving in.Two socket-hollow windows stare.The plywood walls are warped and mushroom-gray.Above what used to be a door,"Nobody's Home," soft, sunken letters say. [End Page 239] This would have been the country once,before the apple orchardsand all the groves of hazelnuts were bought.Nobody's Home. Back then it must have beena fern-blessed, unimpeachable estate.A place where Nobody could be aloneand think the things Nobody thought.I came here almost every daythat last unhappy year.Headful of hurt. Heartful of blame.I came to argue and accuse.Or argue and explain.I argued with myself and always lost.I argued then apologizedto everyone. My wife. The priestwho married us. My in-laws, whom I loved.Our friends. Even the dog,our beautiful and now-dead dogwho, as I argued, scrambled after geese,the grumpy great blue herons, and the squirrels,then scrambled back to me.

We sat in silence every night.We mixed our drinks. We watched inane TV.Then one of us, without a word,would rise and leave the other there.We barely spoke. And yetI couldn't stop the yelling in my head.Anger, I learned, was easier than dread.And dread, as it turned out,was better than despair. [End Page 240] I'd never fallen so far out of love.But by the end, we didn't hardly fight.We moved about like strangers in that house—a little shy, not quite at home,and ruthlessly polite. [End Page 241]

Daniel Anderson has published three books of poems: The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel, Drunk in Sunlight, and January Rain. He teaches on the faculty of the MFA Program at the University of Oregon.

• 没人在家
• 丹尼尔·安德森（生物）

整个冬天，这些缠结的手杖被银刺缠住，并在其根部变得凶残。但是现在，它们带着黑色的果实，在不规则的高高车道上加深，脸红并and壮成长，歼灭了生长栅栏柱和腐蚀了一些被遗忘边界线的鸡丝的地方。Cascade的空气干燥，被松树折腾，但在纯净的阳光下，这些灌木丛闻起来像葡萄酒，令人愉悦的单宁气氛。最近，这条河主要在融化的高山积雪的幽灵上奔流。水在转弯时眨眨眼。我现在能理解为什么有人要在这里建造他的小屋，尽管现在长满青苔的屋顶已经塌陷了。两个插座空心的窗户凝视着。The plywood walls are warped and mushroom-gray.Above what used to be a door,"Nobody's Home," soft, sunken letters say. [End Page 239] This would have been the country once,before the apple orchardsand all the groves of hazelnuts were bought.Nobody's Home. Back then it must have beena fern-blessed, unimpeachable estate.A place where Nobody could be aloneand think the things Nobody thought.I came here almost every daythat last unhappy year.Headful of hurt. Heartful of blame.I came to argue and accuse.Or argue and explain.I argued with myself and always lost.I argued then apologized给大家 我的妻子。嫁给我们的神父。我所爱的岳父 我们的朋友。即使是那只狗，也就是我们美丽而已死的狗，正如我所说，那只狗在鹅，脾气暴躁的蓝鹭和松鼠之间争先恐后，然后又争先恐后地回到我身边。

我们每天晚上都安静地坐着。我们混合了饮料。我们看了无聊的电视。然后，我们一个人，一言不发，就会崛起，而另一个人在那里。我们几乎没有说话。但是我无法停止大喊大叫。我知道，愤怒比恐惧更容易。事实证明，恐惧比绝望更好。[完第240页] 我从未失恋。但是最后，我们几乎没有抗争。我们像那间屋子里的陌生人一样走来走去，有点害羞，不太在家，有礼貌。[结束页241]

丹尼尔·安德森（Daniel Anderson）出版了三本诗集：《威尔伯福斯饭店的守夜人》，《阳光下的醉汉》和《一月雨》。他在俄勒冈大学的MFA计划系任教。